Colossus Lamps available!

[Charlie]

Found oozinggoo.com when I was looking for ways to repair the Grande I picked up at CostCo a few years ago.  It's one of the Chinese made ones that has gone extremely cloudy and ceased to flow (going to try replacing the fluid one of these weekends). 

It was here that I found out about really big Lava lamps.  I was bowled over by videos of the  Colossus lamps and really want to see if I could get one, I couldn't find them available anywhere so I wrote LavaLite.  I wanted to let this group know what I got this from Lava Lite today:

We have a special promo on the Colossus for serious buyers.   This will be the last time the Colossus will be seen.

Please see attached promo sheet with pricing included.

If you are interested please contact on my direct line at 630-496-6663.

 

Best regards,

 

Susan Michaels

Customer Service Representative

LAVA LITE

630-496-6663 direct line

[e-mail]

www.lavalite.com

Sadly these prices are outside of my discretionary funds, even though they include shipping.  I post it in hopes that someone here may be interested.

 

[Gwen Williams]

I am pleased with mine now that I have figured out where to make it run when it has 80 degree room temps with regular 30 degree or less gusts blowing on it

[Kirk]

Gotcha'.  The dimmers make it possible.

Gwen Williams said:

I am pleased with mine now that I have figured out where to make it run when it has 80 degree room temps with regular 30 degree or less gusts blowing on it

[Gwen Williams]

its more of a case of not getting in a big hurry makes it work, it's not a lamp that can be adjusted in one day took us nearly a week to get it dialed in right

Kirk said:

Gotcha'.  The dimmers make it possible.

[Kirk]

Agreed.  I'm enjoying the process.

Gwen Williams said:

its more of a case of not getting in a big hurry makes it work, it's not a lamp that can be adjusted in one day took us nearly a week to get it dialed in right

Kirk said:

Gotcha'.  The dimmers make it possible.

[Kirk]

Gwen - I just reread this.  That's wild -- how do you get 30 degree gusts blowing in an 80 degree room?  You must have old drafty windows like me.  But in Texas, it's not quite as cold.  :>)

Gwen Williams said:

 with regular 30 degree or less gusts blowing on it

[Gwen Williams]

i live in a 1919 built building and my lamp is less than 8' from my front door, so the wind goes through the windows and comes in to hit it every time we open the door, however the boiler here works GREAT

[Kirk]

Yes, I understand.  I live in an old 1904 two story house.  No boiler - propane - and it's not the energy of the future.  Damn stuff is expensive, hence my 60 degree (or less) temps at night.  Ha!  But, I love this old house...

Gwen Williams said:

i live in a 1919 built building and my lamp is less than 8' from my front door, so the wind goes through the windows and comes in to hit it every time we open the door, however the boiler here works GREAT

[Loren]

Well for what it's worth, I solved my problem with my lamp. It happened a couple of days ago, and I fixed it. I actually got stuck flow again this morning, and I just turned the lamp off for 20 minutes, then turned it back on...basically the same thing I did the first time, but I wasn't waiting long enough before. It took about 5-10 minutes to start flowing again, but it's been flowing awesomely ever since. That's 25-30 minutes interrupted flow, instead of having to wait at least 14-15, just to find out whether or not it worked.

It worked like a charm twice!

[EDIT] Just to clarify, this is a fix for when the wax has become detached from the coil in just the right way, so that the flow gets stuck, making the lava look like the water tentacle from the abyss...but deflated. I can't remember who it was that said that in this thread, bit it's perfect. :p

[Kirk]

Having a different lamp to compare it too will be enlightening for you.  The flow on my clear/red has been nothing but outstanding.  I'm pretty confident the purple/pinks will be equally impressive.  VERY different from this difficult purple/yellow flow.

An update on my purple/yellow....

With the red Bulbrite heat lamp bulb, it does respond better and flows better than the Phillips bulb.  My purple/yellow definitely has a flow issue, and it's paradoxical.  The yellow wax requires more heat to flow beautifully like my red/clear, but if I give it too much heat it will expose coil and eventually get stuck -- blob/creature at bottom.

The good news... After running my purple/yellow for 5 weeks now, it is improving.  I can now run it continuously like my red/clear and it doesn't get stuck.  However, it MUST be run a little cooler and the flow is not as interesting -- too slow.

Next step?  I'm going to push the heat and see if I can get it to perform without getting stuck.  This is not an ideal situation and I'm looking forward to the purple/pink replacement -- BUT there is hope for the purple/yellow!  

I encourage my fellow purple/yellow folks to keep working theirs.  Lower heat and time seems to have worked on mine.  I also think this 250w red Bulbrite bulb has also made a difference.  Those Home Depot Phillips bulbs are crap -- like most light bulbs Home Depot sells.

Critter said:

Interesting Colossus behavior.....  (Keep this in mind the room the lamp is in is 68 during the day and goes to 64 after 10pm)

Ok so I've been playing with my Purple/Yellow Colossus.  Last night I decided to see how long I could get it to run with the least amount of lamp intensity.  So I parked the dimmer around 55%, the lamp was not starting from cold so it took a couple hours to get movement.   The lamp flowed lazily, with that chunky, thick wax flow that sort of folds on itself as it collapses and for the most part the wax rarely reaches to top of the lamp.  It flowed like this for a couple hours from midnight to 2am (my longest flow yet) but it was obviously not the type of flow we all desire.  So in a pretty short period of time the wax stops, I see coil, and it turns into the bowling ball round blob that hovers a couple inches over a completely clean and clear bottom and fully exposed coil.  How does this happen?  How can it go from this cool, thick chunky, clumsy flow to over heated at a 55% level?  The dimmer was not touched yet suddenly at this dimmer level it acts as if it is smokin' hot.  I went over to the lamp turned it down to about 30% and let it cool for about 40 min.  I then put it back on the 55% level and let it warm up again.....it took 8 hours from this point to begin it's chunky flow again.  This globe has been really interesting to me.  As Kirk mentioned earlier LL is sending me a purple/pink to replace this globe with, so at this point I can't wait to fire up a different globe on my granite stand and see the difference.  Last night's interesting behavior has me wondering if it is the stand's dimmer that might be messing up and causing heat issues.

Any thoughts out there?

By the way LL has been absolutely great in trying to help me resolve the issues, and really this whole adventure has been kind of fun for me so I'm not really irritated or worked up about it....but it has been really fascinating.  Oh, hell I admit it I'm kinda of a nerd so this stuff intrigues me.

Crit

[Kirk]

Creature from the Abyss -- it was me, Loren!  Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio starred.

I'm going to try your 20 minute shutdown on my purple/yellow, too.  Thanks for the information!

Loren said:

Well for what it's worth, I solved my problem with my lamp. It happened a couple of days ago, and I fixed it. I actually got stuck flow again this morning, and I just turned the lamp off for 20 minutes, then turned it back on...basically the same thing I did the first time, but I wasn't waiting long enough before. It took about 5-10 minutes to start flowing again, but it's been flowing awesomely ever since. That's 25-30 minutes interrupted flow, instead of having to wait at least 14-15, just to find out whether or not it worked.

It worked like a charm twice!

[EDIT] Just to clarify, this is a fix for when the wax has become detached from the coil in just the right way, so that the flow gets stuck, making the lava look like the water tentacle from the abyss...but deflated. I can't remember who it was that said that in this thread, bit it's perfect. :p

[Jim]

I am thinking you are absolutely correct on the purple/pink.  Mine has hit double digits on number of runs and its working flawlessly.

Kirk said:

Having a different lamp to compare it too will be enlightening for you.  The flow on my clear/red has been nothing but outstanding.  I'm pretty confident the purple/pinks will be equally impressive.  VERY different from this difficult purple/yellow flow.

[Loren]

This is supposed to say "That's a 25-30 minute interruption in flow, instead of having to wait at least 14-15 HOURS, just to find out whether or not it worked." Hrrrrp. Oh, and I hope it works for you also, kirk!

Loren said:

...That's 25-30 minutes interrupted flow, instead of having to wait at least 14-15, just to find out whether or not it worked.